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So I’m sure that everyone has heard of globalism or “the globalists trying to take over the world” but if you’re like me then you may be confused about what that means. I thought I would try to take a bit of a look at some of the information on “globalists”.

First off the word globalist or Globalization simply means the interaction between people, companies, and governments around the world. As technology and ability to travel has increased so has the impact and instances of globalization. This has increased trade, exchanging of culture and ideas, as well as migration of workers and citizens.

This doesn’t seem to big of a deal to me but that doesn’t mean there aren’t downsides. Globalization means that multiple countries can have different kinds of impacts on each other. I know that I spend a bit of time criticizing capitalism these days but one downside of globalization in a capitalist system is that countries that don’t embrace capitalism the way that more powerful countries want them to can face sanctions or other restrictions. It can also mean that companies like those in the United States can hire workers in poorer countries with less regulations and less worker unity which can increase their profits but also hurts workers on multiple fronts.

Still, it can also allow for the United Nations to band together and sanction countries that break international laws on things like torture or using chemical weapons. Like with many things globalization seems to be a way to help or hurt different countries depending on the way that it is implemented.

While globalism has a long history stretching back to when ships could travel long distances and different economies and different political ideas could travel with them the conspiracy theories that we’re seeing a lot of today seem to have started in the late 1980s or early 1990s when the term New World Order came about. The New World Order or NWO is considered by those who believe in it to be a secret group of elitists who conspire to rule the world with an authoritarian world government which will replace all the sovereign nation states.

I don’t really have the time to get into all of the different conspiracy theories that go along with this but they go back quite far in history and a list may include, various end time predictions, Freemason conspiracies, the Illuminati, Zionism, The British government taking back over it’s colonies, and many more.

To bring us up to date, one of the things that Donald Trump ran on during his campaign was his fight against globalism. He left it relatively undefined, but he talked about it in much the same terms that most people think of it. Hidden forces, running things behind the scenes, infesting society with the news media, running governments, and running the financial institutions of the world

Some conspiracy theorists reject the use of the term globalism as the mainstream accepts it. They believe that it means there is a group of people who want to take over the world and install a one world government that essentially fits any boogeyman that they can conceive of. From Alex Jones to Lauren Southern to Donald J Trump, they all reject globalism. To quote Lauren Southern, former “journalist” for Rebel Media, “Globalists almost always sneer down their nose at tradition, disdain national culture, laugh at religion and generally despise the West while holding a creepy affection for the third world.They want open borders, cheap labor and antinationalism to benefit their business and political visions, and are all too willing to shaft the little people to achieve it.”

And you know, even if that were true much of it doesn’t sound all that bad. Tradition is stupid, national culture is arbitrary, religion is foolish, and the West is not necessarily the best.

So, I’m not sure where to leave this. As you can see globalism is a real thing that has different effects on different people but isn’t quite the giant evil conspiracy that the far right portray it as. If I’m spitballing here I’d say that many people like Donald Trump take full advantage of what globalism really is while also believing in the conspiracy version because the real globalism helps them profit and using the talking points of the conspiracy help them retain power and influence over their far right supporters.

In this episode of The Skeptic Studio Cory talked to Dr. Edwin Hodge from the University of Victoria in British Colombia. They discussed various extremist groups, some links between ways they approach the world, and some of the history behind them.

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